Today’s review is one of the most popular rares in Chrysotic Plague; Octorilla. Being a Madness piece, one cannot help but expect poor stats for its cost; the Octorilla certainly delivers. It has pretty subpar stats, and the usual Madness trademark of an utterly-abysmal defense stat (of 4, in this case). Anything that can kill a Cannibal Pariah can disrupt this 11-point piece. Good going.

To make matters worse, not only does a great number of tourney bands not run Madness, but the other aspects also give fantastic drops for 11 points; Dreadmorph Ogre, Caged Grawlth, World Eater, Angel of Sunrise, Elite Gladiator and Pearlthorn Dragon Knight to name a few, where all of which are big fatties with solid abilities (except the Grawlth, but then again its stats are pretty insane).

Therefore, to make up for its terrible stats in an unappreciated aspect, the Octorilla has to have a bordering-on-godly ability to make it into a tourney warband. Does it have something good? Yes. Utterly fantastic? No.

Brainblast, itself, is damn good. For a mere 3 spawn points, you get a column of fiery psychic death. Although one may stop and wonder how many pieces there may be in a column at once, be assured that in many cases, a single column in the middle three columns should have a good number of targets. The problem, however, lies in it being Brainblast "5". As many know, rolling 5 dice would give you an average of about 5 damage. What made the Fleshless Reaper and Brighthammer Avenger so good, however, was their 6-power abilities (in addition to the great synergy some pieces gave them).

Short to say, 5-power attacks are considered a little subpar, since a lot of people want their ability to be able to at least disrupt a Scarab Warcharm on an average roll. Still, 5 dice can sometimes yield fantastic results if you get lucky; just because the average is 5, it doesn’t mean a 15 is impossible (though, admittedly, highly unlikely), and a mere 6 or 7 against a Warcharm is not too difficult. The fact that Brainblast allows you to hit non-locals without having to engage is also a good thing, since the Octorilla has really poor survivability.

Overall, the piece itself is playable, but I doubt it’s a tournament-quality piece. It is, however, a very fun piece to play with, and can definitely be powerful given proper utilization and some good dice rolls.

Constructed: 3.5/5. If I’m not the only reviewer today, I’m pretty sure someone would give it a 4/5 or (maybe) higher. However, in my opinion, its just a very slightly above average piece that happened to be overpriced.